Agenda

Director, Communications & Corporate Development, nChain

Sean Griffin joined nChain in 2021 as Director, Communications and Corporate Development. He brings more than 15 years of experience providing reputational risk assessments, developing strategic messaging, and executing communication for over £10 billion in investments, projects, M&A, and financings.

Prior to joining nChain, Sean held roles as the global lead for corporate communications at two publicly traded companies headquartered in Canada. In both these roles, his responsibilities included all corporate and financial communications activities, as well as sustainability reporting and ESG strategies.

Before joining the private sector, Sean worked in senior advisory roles within the Government of Canada. He has focused his career on highly regulated industries, including cannabis, metals and mining, international development, and military procurement.

Sean has a Bachelor of Applied Economics, a Master of Corporate and Marketing Communication, and holds a Fundamentals in Sustainability Accounting Credential.

Actor | Regional Goodwill Ambassador - North America, UN Environment Programme

With a strong creative sensibility that has driven his personal evolution as an actor, filmmaker, musician, entrepreneur and philanthropist, Adrian Grenier is as passionate about embodying compelling characters as he is about developing successful business ventures and leading a global evolutionary shift: a campaign for environmentally conscious living.

In front of the camera, the versatile Grenier is best-known for his starring role as Vincent Chase on Entourage, one of HBO’s most popular half-hour series in the network’s history, which ran for eight seasons and has been syndicated in nearly two dozen markets worldwide. The much anticipated Warner Bros. film version of Entourage, written and directed by series creator Doug Ellin, was released in 2015.

Grenier recently starred in two films; the independent feature Trash Fire, a comedy take on psychological thrillers, focusing on a man forced to confront his past when he and his girlfriend end up entangled in a web of lies, deceit and murder, and Marauders, alongside Bruce Willis and Christopher Meloni, a thriller about an FBI agent who is on the trail of bank robbers who give the stolen loot to charity. As he delves further into the investigation, the lawman discovers the trail of secrets that a bank’s owner (Willis) has protected. He was most recently seen in the political thriller Affairs of State and will next be seen in Stage Mother alongside Lucy Liu, which is set in the drag queen world of San Francisco, as well as executive producing the documentary Youth Unstoppable, which will follow the youth environmental movement.

Along with memorable roles opposite Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway in The Devil Wears Prada and in the romantic comedy Drive Me Crazy, his other credits include the Woody Allen films Celebrity and Anything Else, the indie film Goodbye World, the John Waters comedy Cecil B. Demented and the Sundance Film Festival-nominated The Adventures of Sebastian Cole.

Founder of Reckless Productions, Grenier has also brought his keen eye and love of storytelling to the production of documentaries: as producer and director of Shot in the Dark (2002), writer, producer, and director of the critically acclaimed Teenage Paparazzo (2010), producer of Don’t Quit Your Daydream (2010) and executive producer of How to Make Money Selling Drugs (2012), in addition to a variety of short films. Grenier is co-producer of the documentary, 52, which chronicles the search for the “loneliest whale in the world.”

Beyond his career as a respected actor and filmmaker, Grenier is a musician and founder of Wreckroom Records, a music incubator for emerging artists that has aided and promoted dozens of rising young performers and bands. An investor and advisor to emerging technology ventures, he is also a passionate environmentalist who actively supports organizations focusing on habit-changing education.

In 2015, Grenier co-founded Lonely Whale Foundation. Dedicated to bringing people closer to the world’s ocean through education and awareness, the foundation aims to inspire empathy for marine life and action for ocean health. On World Environment Day, June 2017, Grenier was appointed a UN Environment Programme Goodwill Ambassador through which he advocates for a collaborative approach to address our environmental issues.

COO, TAAL Distributed Information Technologies

Lars Jorgensen is a highly qualified executive with experience in building, developing and managing high-performing teams, including in the fintech sector and the digital currency and blockchain space.

Based in Switzerland, Lars has taken on increasingly senior roles, designing and implementing business strategies, plans and procedures and including comprehensive goal setting for performance and organizational growth. Lars spent 10 years as COO and Deputy General Manager and Executive Board member in a private bank in Switzerland and held the CFO and head of investment fund administration positions in a private bank in Luxembourg with more than 160 employees. 

Co-Founder & CEO, Compute North

A 25-year veteran of the IT and information security industry, Dave Perrill has been keenly immersed in the digital currency mining industry and blockchain technology since its formative days. He founded and subsequently sold two technology companies, including internet service provider and managed security provider SecureConnect, which was acquired by Trustwave Holdings in 2012.

Dave also served as CEO of Wand Corporation, a leading point-of-sale and Digital Menu board provider to the Quick Service Restaurant industry. Dave has extensive experience in networking, data center engineering, scaling large IT systems, and security. He holds a BS in Management Information Systems and an MBA in Finance from the University of Minnesota.

Dave has been a member of YPO (Young Presidents Organization) since 2015 as part of the Twin Cities (Minneapolis, Minnesota) chapter.

Partner, MNP

Hassan Qureshi (“Hash”), CD, CPA, CMA, CISA, P.Eng, CIA, CRMA, CRISC, CISSP, CGEIT, CDPSE, is a partner of MNP. He has over 25 years of performing internal audit and information systems/information technology audits, including a significant background in system under development audits.

Hash has worked as an operational IT professional, security lead, project manager, enterprise architect and network engineer. Hassan leads a professionally diverse team of accountants, IT security professionals, engineers and finance professionals to deliver value to clients.

Project Experience

Hash has experience in Business system transformation projects on large multi-year enterprise technology implementations in private and public sector. He recently led numerous independent risk advisory engagements for large and complex ERP and HR/pay system implementations for the following:

 - Government of Alberta

 - Public Works and Government Services Canada (PWGSC)

 - Shared Services Canada (SSC)

 - International Development Research Centre (IDRC)

 - Canada Housing and Mortgage Corporation (CMHC)

 - Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat (TBS)

He has also recently led large data governance and data integrity engagements for data warehousing & business intelligence projects including artificial Intelligence governance & ethics, data analytics and business modelling. Hash has extensive experience working with blockchain companies, start-ups, exchanges and has worked directly with regulators such as the Office of the Privacy Commission and UK’s Information Commissioner Office (UK ICO).

CTO, nChain | Technical Director, Bitcoin SV Infrastructure Team

Steve Shadders has been involved in Bitcoin infrastructure since early 2011. As one of the first authors of open-source mining pool software “PoolServerJ,” he was at the forefront of implementing new features like merged mining and local coinbase generation that are in common use today.

Steve was actively involved in Mike Hearn’s Bitcoin project as one of the earliest contributors and still uses it today as his staple Bitcoin library. Today, Steve heads up nChain’s engineering team and is the Technical Director of the Bitcoin SV Node project. He is passionate about the future role of Bitcoin in reshaping the world. In his own words, it is disruptive technology with “more potential to change the world than the printing press.” In his role, he contributes his ecosystem-wide perspective to support building the mining and UX infrastructure needed to enable Satoshi’s Vision to be realized.

President & Chair, Gray Wolf Analytics Inc.

Professor & Chair, J. Herbert Smith Centre for Technology Management and Entrepreneurship, University of New Brunswick

Dr. Dhirendra Shukla utilizes his expertise from the telecom sector and extensive academic background, and co-founded Gray Wolf Analytics Inc., a firm that is focused on cryptocurrency and blockchain risk management.
 
Additionally, he is the Professor and Chair of the J. Herbert Smith Centre for Technology Management and Entrepreneurship at the University of New Brunswick (UNB), Canada. They are currently partnered with industry leading firms in the energy sector researching Smart Grid Energy Technologies.

Recognition of his tireless efforts and vision are demonstrated through UNB’s 2014 award from Startup Canada as “Most Entrepreneurial Post-Secondary Institution of the Year,” his nomination as a finalist for Industry Champion by KIRA, and his nomination as a finalist for Progress Media’s Innovation in Practice award. Dhirendra was nominated for the RBC Top 25 Canadian Immigrant Award and selected by a panel of judges as a Top 75 finalist. Most recently, he received the Entrepreneur Promotion Award by Startup Canada (2017), as well as the Outstanding Educator Award by the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of New Brunswick in 2018.